Virginia Tech launches new Alexandria campus, but its first students are learning virtually

Virginia Tech’s new “Innovation Campus” has launched its first semester, but not yet in its future North Potomac Yard home.

While the city of Alexandria and Virginia Tech’s team of architects, lawyers and planners make quick work of the entitlement process for the planned $1 billion campus, university officials decided to take classes entirely online for its initial semester as the pandemic rages on, the school said last week.

Roughly 80 students are learning remotely, about two dozen enrolled in Virginia Tech’s master of engineering in computer science, a degree program created for the new campus. Sara Hooshangi is director of that program, hired in January from George Washington University’s College of Professional Studies. She’s teaching over Zoom from her office at Virginia Tech’s Falls Church campus.

It’s not what she was expecting coming into the job, but it’s also not her first time teaching a class online. Hooshangi said that there are new opportunities in teaching remotely…